


The stars were twenty-two and bright

by faceofstone



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Leather Jackets, Lighthouses, M/M, Stargazing, Tarot, Vague Timeline Placement, bittersweet fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 23:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10797105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: Upright, the Tower indicates a time of great turmoil and destruction, which will eventually bring with it change and regeneration. When the Tarot appears reversed, however, there is no flash of light, no destruction. The status quo goes on, for a time.Albert and Dale share a moment under its shadow. For as long as it lasts.





	The stars were twenty-two and bright

The last thing Dale was expecting, a few scarce hours after after admitting to an old, uncultivated love for stargazing, was the honk of a horn under his window. The night sky holds many promises, it paints wonders and ages so vast they seem infinite to this world below, he remembered arguing, lunch conversation still on his mind. Unless one is an astronomer, he had added, following that line of thought to its natural conclusion, but it is only to be expected that every job comes with the shattering of a few cozy illusions. He, Dale Cooper, was allowed to find comfort in that relative permanence, in that superhuman scale. Down on Earth, life rarely was so kind.

 

It took three honks for him to look outside, four to recognize they were meant for him: wrapped in a leather jacket, sitting on a vintage cruiser motorcycle, Albert was waving at him to drop whatever trifles he was wasting his late afternoon with and come down outside.

He carried a spare helmet and wouldn't listen to any complaints about what wearing it would do to Dale's hair, nor what Dale's hair gel would do to it.

 

The road led them out of town, to some place only it and Albert knew, past monoliths of industrial relics reclaimed by rust, asphalt giving way to the intimacy of a dirt road, until even the electric lines gave up on them and they were alone on a hill crest, driving along the coastline toward the setting sun. Dale held onto the last warmth of the day, captured by Albert's weathered black leather. He’d dug his fingers into the jacket's pockets to shield himself from the wind, relishing the roughness of the hide brushing against his knuckles, and clung to this one good constant in his life, just not too hard, lest it, too, broke.

 

But when the deeper hues of the night took over, blue beech trees swaying in the cold wind, a faraway mountain lost in a purple haze, the bike got parked by the roadside and his companion was still there by his side. In that suspended sunset, he had not shattered, nor vanished, nor, under his black helmet, had his face turned into one Dale knew from a childhood dream, one who had a riddle for him presented in whistles, a tune Dale would one day need to decode. All those fears vanished. Albert Rosenfield remained Albert Rosenfield, solid and real. Even as he willingly, uncharacteristically pushed himself miles away from civilization without mouthing a complaint.

“This way”, Albert called, now a dozen steps ahead of him, sticking out like a sore thumb in the tall grass.

Dale followed. 

 

On the motorbike, having realized that Albert was not going to explain his visit nor their destination, Dale had decided that he would not challenge the loud, calming roar of the engines, that he could wait for some eventual silence to ask his questions. 

With his feet back on solid ground, he found no silence, deafened by the nocturnal life of insects and a bird's late, mournful calls. He also found he had no curiosity left to satisfy. In following Albert's silhouette through the dark twigs and bushes, Dale Cooper found himself living in a complete and perfect moment with no will to ruin it. So much had changed and ended. This hike, too, would soon be over. He walked every step in admiration of all the rich and wonderful possibilities it was still fraught with, existing, for a time, all at once.

 

Albert waited for him sitting on the outer wall of an abandoned lighthouse, a low perimeter of stone and moss lit up a brilliant white by the moonlight long after its beacon had broken down.

“They are beautiful from here”, he said, a very simple explanation from a complex man. Indeed the stars were, and the full moon overhead, and Albert's gentle hand turned upwards to point at the sky; his private smile; the wondrous, intense, burning contradictions of the man and all the love he brought with him; and Dale himself, part in that moment of a sacred whole, and the earth under him, the ground he kneeled on, grass tickling his ears as he lay down on his back, arms stretched open to embrace the night.

Dale had expressed a love for the sky and Albert, dear Albert, brought him close to the heavens.

“It is beautiful.”

 

Once a comfortable peace had settled in their little hideout, low white wall protecting them from the night woods beyond, Dale cleared his voice to tell a story, a story about the moon. It was an old tale about the succession of her stone faces, round and round, quite odd and circular now that he recited it out loud, and very possibly made up on the spot by the masked boy who first whispered it to him by the bonfire at a distant summer fair.

Huddled up in his jacket, Albert remained perched on the wall like a sentinel. He shared a story of his own, a humorous little thing - the way he remembered it - about the cat who tried to catch the moon in the well. The story, they found out, did not factor in a happy ending. They gave it one.

 

And they found that the lighthouse's door had been pried open over and over again by generations of romantic rebels, leaving locks and rusty nailed planks discarded on the ground, and finding it open they shared a complicit look and made their way inside like the kids they were never fully allowed to be. The spiral staircase led them up, back outside, on the upper balustrade under a moon that was still too vivid. Dale brushed his hands against Albert's back. Feeling the wind grow cold, he pulled him close in an embrace. They existed, there, in that moment. Their ghosts would remain alongside the rows of names, dates, arrow-pierced hearts and impromptu Sharpie poetry that filled the walls.

 

He saw it, as he held onto Albert's arms and leaned past the balustrade, head stretched out so far as to be turned upside down, drunk with affection and the silence of the night. The lighthouse, the crowned tower, lay at their feet with its trawl of stars, and if they let themselves go, they would soar upwards and upwards, rising past the steep gray cliff to the splashing waves above. The image beckoned another, ancient, blurred in the corner of Dale's eye...

 

“Whatever vision's on the menu, I don't want to hear about it”, said Albert, holding him closer.

“It is not that easy, Albert.”

“I know.”

“Just like closing one's eyes to our material does not negate its existence beyond one's eyelids, so do the symbols that course through it remain valid and true beyond our capacity and willingness to pay attention to them.”

“I  _ know _ , Coop.”

“...but maybe they can wait.”

“That’s the spirit. Are five minutes too much to ask for?”

“I am confident we can spare ten.”

They kissed under the moonlight. The rest of their lives could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Courtesy of:  
> 1\. the prompt "things you said under the stars and in the grass" which took a life of its own, especially as I visualized said grass on a cliff by the sea, under some ruined tower, maybe a lighthouse, and then maybe Coop has a vision of a symbol or something and, [hey](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f3/13/9d/f3139d5c42c9c67a7832b6bfd96d43f4.jpg).  
> 2\. [YKK as a general mood](http://static.zerochan.net/Yokohama.Kaidashi.Kikou.full.445867.jpg).  
> 3\. ...[this.](https://68.media.tumblr.com/b4f1c75845e3a311ad5381f6c820cac1/tumblr_inline_opc1p3cObz1qhu9cd_540.jpg)  
> 4\. My Life My Tapes always (both for melancholy and the sincere & sensual appreciation of said leather)


End file.
